~~~~snip~~~~
> I am wondering if anyone has written up a document that I can refer users
> to about particular policies, The policies in quesiton are
>
> (1) Quoting entire message being replied to
> (2) Doing (1) by sticking the quoted message at the end
> (3) Posting multipart/alternative messages.
~~~~another snip~~~
> Please, I am not trying to debate whether these are bad practices. I
> consider them bad practice for my list, and would like documents that
> basically articulate that view (while the view is not universal, I suspect
> that I am far from alone).
Snipping is an ongoing problem and one that seems very hard to get people to
do. What I did was to put the following in both the Intro (that gets sent to all
new subscribers automatically) & in a FAQ that gets posted approx. every two
weeks):
"Since many people have either limited access time allotted, or pay for
download time, it would be most helpful if parts of the message you're
replying to were snipped, so that only the key points are left. At the
very least, the footer at the bottom of the message should be snipped,
so that it's not duplicated. Lack of snipping also makes the digest
version much more difficult to read through, and adds unnecessary
lines of text. This is just a suggestion to be helpful to others,
nothing more."
Also included:
"Only ASCII text posts should be sent to the mailing list, as attachment
files, pictures and other large files will bounce. Smaller non-ASCII
text files may end up being converted into ASCII text, which can be
costly for many members to download."
I also have a statement in the Intro to the effect that by staying subscribed a new
member has agreed to abide by the outlined rules and guidelines, if they disagree
with them they must unsubscribe *now*. That leaves me free to send a warning
private email to an offending member which they are required to acknowledge
within a given period of time, if they ignore that and/or continue to offend then
they get unsubscribed.
A lot of folks in North America don't realize that most European countries'
phone systems charge for local calls by the minute, which makes snipping -
especially the multiple requoted posts from the whole thread - even more
important, apart from nuisance it creates for everyone.
Hope that's of some use to you.
Mally :)
